


Wine, Women and Schlong

by Brighid



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hmmm. Blair gets locked *in* a closet and then has to get back out...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wine, Women and Schlong

**Author's Note:**

> This story is for Mona. I hope it makes her smile. And for Dawn and JiM, who always make me smile (even when they make me cry!)

## Wine, Women and Schlong

by Brighid

Author's disclaimer: Not mine. Look at the terrible, terrible things I do to them... no profit. None. 

* * *

Wine, Women and Schlong 

by Brighid 

"Aw, shit, I don't believe this!" Blair Sandburg muttered as the photocopier shuddered and stopped in the middle of a class set of exam sheets he was putting together. First the damned thing had jammed on him repeatedly during the collation process. Then, it had tried to mangle his originals in the feeder. Now, smack dab in the middle of the Anthro 100 final, the damn thing had powered down completely, the toner light flashing balefully at him. He returned the glare and furtively kicked the machine a couple of times, but the damned thing refused to continue until its infernal thirst was slaked. He wondered if there was some sort of shamanistic skill that involved de-whammying outmoded office equipment. 

When it became clear that no amount of shimmying, shaking or aggressive button pushing would get the damned thing working again, Sandburg headed down to the department supply office. He prayed to whatever gods watched over luckless T.A.'s who needed to meet big burly cops at one (and not a second later, Sandburg!) that the Dragon would be on her lunch break. 

Apparently somebody up there was listening, because Ms. Pearson, the fifty-something office manager of the Anthropology department, known (mostly) affectionately as the Dragon because of how she guarded her supply cupboard and some (probably) apocryphal tale about two singed freshmen and a junior prof, was indeed at her lunch. Which meant that he, Blair Sandburg, could jimmy the lock with the ease of long practice, take the toner, some paper, and maybe, if he was feeling really daring, one of those cool clicky-pens generally reserved for the senior professors and guest lecturers. The Anthro T.A.'s had an ongoing scavenger hunt, and the pen was worth some serious points. 

Unfortunately, while it seemed that whatever gods had protected him had no problems with a little minor B&E in the name of higher education, they apparently disapproved of petty theft for personal gain; just as his fingers closed over the prize pen, he heard the strident, nasal voice of the Dragon, deep in conversation with what sounded like the newest junior secretary. The very pretty, very sexy, very single new junior secretary, Missy Huntingdon (and how the hell did a girl get a name like that, anyway?) of the "bodacious ta-ta's", as he'd described her to Jim the other day. The "ta-ta's" part was mostly added just to make the older man crack-up. It had worked spectacularly well, making Jim spray break room coffee out his nose and then explain, still spluttering, why it was really, really risky to use the word "ta-ta's" in a place where women carried firearms. 

Ta-ta's not withstanding, she was now just a few feet away from him, separated only by the really cheap pressboard door and the Dragon herself, and he was utterly helpless in the supply cupboard, because no amount of eyelash batting would get the Dragon's forgiveness. Hell, he'd be using the reject Bic pens, the ones with the defective ink cartridges that went kerblooie without provocation, until he was old and grey if Pearson caught him now. His only hope was to wait it out, and pray that the woman had to use the restroom before resuming her duties. With an inaudible sigh, the kind perfected to annoy only Sentinels, he settled in for the duration, and listened for a chance to make his escape. 

About two seconds into listening, he started to feel pretty damned smug, because it appeared that just as he had been fixating on Missy Huntingdon, so was she fixated on him. It seemed that the newest junior secretary thought he was "cute" and "funny" and perhaps even, well, "edible". Yes, Blair thought, I am the King, and he started to do a little pelvic thrust/wiggle/thrust worthy of Elvis, only to stop mid-wiggle when he heard the Dragon's reply. 

"Well, dear, yes. He is certainly all that!" the older woman agreed. "He's been here for, oh, years now, and we went from mothering him to adoring him, but the last eighteen months or so, I'm afraid he's been off the market," she said, and he could hear the sound of her putting her purse in her drawer, hanging her jacket up, setting her desk in order, and he was so focused on these little details that he almost missed her comment. 

Almost. 

What the f...? 

Off the market? Since when? Hell, as far as he was concerned, his existence was one big, long, festive market day, full of wine, women and song. With jugglers and firewalkers and travelling players. But no mimes. He really, really hated mimes. 

But the Dragon had other ideas. "He's been in a committed relationship for almost a year and a half, and while he still flirts and socializes, you can tell his heart is taken!" She sighed, almost dreamily, and it scared the hell out of Blair Sandburg. "His SO is around all the time, always picking him up, especially in bad weather. They do just about everything together... lunch, camping, concerts. It's so ... sweet!" 

"But the only person I see coming around is the big cop he lives with ... oooohhhhhhhhhh!" Missy Huntingdon said, suddenly, knowingly, and it rang like a death knell in Blair's head. It was all he could do to keep from beating his skull against the door. At this point, he was almost willing to sacrifice himself to the Dragon if it kept this conversation from following through to its illogical conclusion. "You mean he's gay?" Missy asked, and he could hear the light bulb, just freaking _hear_ it going on over her head, and he wondered why the hell he hadn't just freaking asked her out last week instead of playing cool and coy, because there was just no way, no goddamned way he could convince her now, now that she'd had her horribly bad, terribly wrong, embarrassingly inaccurate epiphany. 

"I believe," said the Dragon, her voice prim and dry and worldly-wise, "the term is bisexual!" and Blair bit back a groan, thinking two blips in the very late 80's does not a bisexual make. It was called _experimentation_ for a reason, for chrissakes! "And you understand, what with his position here, and the type of work his SO does, the need for discretion. We guard their little secret very fiercely here!" the Dragon informed Missy, and he could hear, he could just freaking _hear_ her nodding her pretty blonde head with endearing complicity. A web of women, protecting his secret love from public scrutiny. 

He wanted to cry. 

At least it explained why he'd had so goddamned much freaking free time the last few months. Apparently the sisterhood had gotten the word out. In a weird sort of way, it was a little comforting. At least women were still _interested_. They just assumed he wasn't. 

He really, really wanted to cry. 

And then he heard the Dragon say something about Caesar Salads, and Garlic Breath, and he heard her fishing through her drawers for the lavatory key, and there it was, his golden opportunity. As he heard the fading click-clack of the older woman's heels, he hurried out of the cupboard, waved the toner aloft at the gaping Missy Huntingdon, whose pretty face coloured as she realized he must have heard everything, emphasis on the _every_ , but he just smiled at her. 

"Ran out of toner, exam sets to finish," he said by way of explanation. "I didn't want to wait, and then didn't want to get caught," he confided. "You won't tell, will you?" 

Missy shook her head, smiling. Most of the secretaries aided and abetted the T.A.'s when needed. "But I could run the set for you, if you want. That is part of my job description," she offered helpfully. 

Real relief flashed through Blair. "Hey, that'd be so cool! I've been struggling with the old monster for hours now, and I'm supposed to meet Jim at one, and I was so afraid I was gonna be...uh. You know." Too late he saw the faint softening in her face, the sort of doe-eyed "isn't that cute" look that brought back the bitter memory of everything he'd just heard, and reminded him of exactly why he'd be spending Friday night with Jim. Again. 

"You just let me take that, Blair," Missy said sweetly, taking the toner and following him to the copy room. Woodenly, he walked through what he wanted with her, and she nodded and smiled and patted the machine a couple of times and it just sort of purred to life under her hands and started spitting out perfectly collated tests. 

He envied it terribly. 

A few minutes later she handed him a still-warm stack. "Here you go, Blair. Now you'll be on time for Jim. Say "hi" for me, will you?" And she smiled at him, and the light bulb was glowing like neon, and Blair was really, really bummed. 

)0( 

The whole drive over to the station he tried to figure out just how such a wild and unfounded and utterly ridiculous rumour had become accepted fact without him even realizing it. Hell, he wondered how the hell such a rumour got started, period. It wasn't like anyone had caught him writing "I love Jim" on his notebooks, and they certainly hadn't been canoodling in the halls of Rainier, unless you counted headlocks and noogies, but there it was, right there in front of him, and _something_ must have started it. 

Yeah, sure, they spent a lot of time together. In truth, if he was going to be objective, he had to admit that they spent an almost scary amount of time together. They lived together, socialized together, worked together, played together. As he reviewed their relationship, he realized that over the last year and a half he and Jim had sort of narrowed their worlds down pretty much to one another. He still dated, some, but nothing too serious except the rather bitter, off and on relationship with Sam. Nothing that would be really obvious on campus. But hell, it was still a bit of a leap to turn his romantic dry spell and close friendship into the romance of the century. Maybe there was enough there to make people wonder, a little, but this wasn't speculation. This was Departmental Fact, and there had to have been something more there than just Jim's omnipresence to set things off. 

He was no closer to an answer, though, by the time he pulled into the PD garage, and it was driving him just a little buggy. At first he considered asking Jim what he thought on the matter, but several different scenarios presented themselves when he envisioned _that_ particular conversation, and most of them ended with Jim offering to give him a swirlie. Nevertheless, he wanted to know, he had an enquiring mind, he was an observer of human societies. Maybe he just needed to do a little detached observing in order to answer his own question. 

Opportunities abounded pretty much as soon as he got off the elevator and walked down the hall to the bull pen; Jim was sitting up, watching the door for him, and for just a split-second the older man's granite face relaxed into a gentle smile. Blair staggered slightly under the impact of that micro-expression, that brief, almost certainly unconscious betrayal. That was the look Jim reserved for puppies and babies and lost souls -- he'd looked at Stacy like that, and Lt. McKinney's newborn. And apparently, for reasons the young anthropologist couldn't even begin to fathom, he looked at Blair Sandburg like that. 

By the time Blair reached the older man's desk, Ellison was wearing his more customary scowl. "You're late," he growled, and hell, he sounded faintly pissed -- vintage Jim. 

"I was propitiating the photocopier gods with offerings of toner and blood sacrifices," Blair said easily, sliding into the chair that had sort of, over the last eighteen months, somehow become part of Jim's desk and Blair's chair into the bargain. "Anthro 101 finals needed to be run, and the copier was doing some sort of funky evil machine vengeance thing. I think it knows I broke the toaster." 

"Again," Jim amended drily. "And you better hope like hell whatever you came up with works on cranky captains, because Simon has been hollering for the Delarsky paperwork for about, oh, two hours, and now you're late, so I think we're gonna have to downgrade his condition from peeved to pissed." 

Blair scooted Jim over and opened the requisite file on the computer. "Jesus H. Kee-rist, Jim. Somebody forget to fill you in on the opposable thumb upgrade?" he muttered. "Who the hell held the crayon for you before I showed up?" He felt a short, sharp tug on his ponytail, but ignored it as he focused on the report of the bust and take down. A few carefully worded obfuscations compensated for Jim's use of smell and taste in tracking down Delarsky. He slid back away to let Jim do the last bits and pieces. "Happy now?" he demanded. 

"Ecstatic. Especially after you show me how that whole opposable thumb thing works when you get us some coffee from the break room," Jim growled, tongue protruding faintly as he forwarded the file to Simon. "And put that finger down, Sandburg, unless you suddenly want it to become opposable, too!" 

Blair heard a couple of sniggers, very Rafe and H.-ish in tone, but ignored them admirably and went to go get the coffee, because, hey, maybe he wanted a coffee, too. So. Surly asshole mistaken for man in love? He scratched his head as he let the baked-on coffee rinse out of the carafe, and then set to re-filling the filter basket with the stash of good ground beans he kept in the airtight container in the little cupboard to the left of the fridge. Jim hated the older, less-rigorously sealed beans, said they tasted like crap, so he'd taken to... 

Oh. Shit. Okay. Blair scratched his head again. Maybe he actually said this sort of shit out loud. Around witnesses. That could be part of the whole situation. He sounded like his friend's wife, talking about the new Tupperware that burped just _so_ and as a result guaranteed absolutely mmm-mmm good cabbage rolls at work, no nasty stale old things. 

Blair had sudden visions of himself, thirty years from now, chasing Jim down the street with a thermal lunch bag full of Sentinel treats. 

Oh. Shit. 

So there, thought Blair, is one piece of the puzzle. I'm an idiot. Which, when he thought on it, was a pretty major piece in a lot of the puzzles in his life. 

"Juan and the Donkey get lost down in processing?" Jim's lazy drawl broke through his reverie, and made him not merely spill the beans, but send them flying up into the air. Jim somehow managed to snag the jar, which Blair had fortunately never gotten around to opening, and just sort of stood and stared at Blair for a while. 

"Do I have to frisk you for amphetamines, Junior?" the big cop asked at last. "Or have you been mainlining break room coffee?" He opened the seal-lock, sniffed deeply. "Hey, this doesn't smell like..." A small, happy smile drifted over the Sentinel's features as he inhaled. "No wonder the coffee tastes so much better when you make it!" he finished at last. He handed the jar back to Blair, patted the younger man's cheek. "Thanks, Sandburg. Thanks." 

They just stood there awkwardly a moment longer, Jim's hand hovering by Blair's face, Blair clutching the stupid coffee jar, and then the older man just sort of nodded and turned and left the room. 

And Blair watched him go, and thought about the real delight, that flash of almost, well, freaking _joy_ on Jim's face when he realized that the good coffee was for _him_. That _Blair_ had gotten the good coffee for _him_. And Blair wondered how often that had ever happened in Jim's life, pre-Blair. And he sighed, knowing he'd be asking what's-his-name's wife just what the series of Tupperware was that kept things so mmm-mmm good and fresh. 

Because he'd liked that look on Jim's face. 

Apparently, market day had ended, as had the days of wine, women and song. 

)0( 

Blair woke up brooding, which wasn't a completely unheard of thing. And it wasn't the grimmest, nastiest, play all your sad songs kind of brooding, either. It was more of a "how the hell did I end up here, wasn't I paying attention?" kind of brooding. Because he'd continued to observe as the rest of the day had passed, and the rest of the week, and hell, suddenly everything made sense, and Missy Huntingdon was not the only one with 100-watt epiphanies going on over her head. 

Somewhere, somehow, sometime when Blair was writing a paper or checking out a co-ed's GPA (gorgeous, perfect ass), he and Jim had gotten married. Ward and June, only missing the Beaver. He bit into his pillow and snickered around that particular pun. And then snickered harder as he pictured Jim in the pearls. Hell, the big guy already had the apron... 

But facts were facts. He had observed, taken notes, done comparative analyses. They didn't live like roommates did. Way too many boundaries and territories in those relationships. He and Jim had broken most of those the first month or two together. Best friends, even, didn't spend so much time together, do so much for each other. Maybe they didn't have a string of Hallmark moments and moonlit walks to their credit, but their lives were totally enmeshed, intermingled, and he was finding that he had a hell of a time understanding what was normal and abnormal anymore, because they were just so wrapped up in each other it was no wonder all of Rainier (and apparently a largish contingent of the female support staff at the station, if recent observations were reliable) assumed he and Jim were an item. They were almost oblivious to everyone else, and everyone else was starting to notice. Shit. 

He rolled over onto his side, blew his nose noisily, and considered his case in point: three days ago, at breakfast, he'd mentioned a scratchy throat and a headache and just general unwellness. Commented he'd probably picked up a touch of that cold that was going around. 

Jim had shown up mid-morning, taking a detour from a list of witnesses he was tracking down, with the cold-air humidifier from home and a bowl of the chicken noodle for Mannie's, the Jewish Deli in the Market. And a box quilted Kleenex. Because, he said, his Sentinel senses had been tingling. 

And Blair had been grateful, because the tickle had gone into full-scale cough and his nose had plugged up and his head was aching like a sonuvabitch and the Herbal Apothecary was closed on Monday's. Jim had simply patted his head and told him to drink lots of water and that pissy tea he liked so much, and Missy, walking by his open door, had smiled almost beatifically upon them. 

Which was damning enough on its own, but then he had come home late, having spent the afternoon trying to finish up those Anthro 101 exams, only to find his room turned out with clean sheets and chili-soup on the stove and Jim in mother-hen mode. Nothing mushy or cutesy, but he knew, just knew, that the older man was taking his temperature every time he brushed up against him. And he knew that the clean sheets were not a set of his own, but a set Jim's flannels that Jim had folded down to fit the smaller futon, because hell, they just felt nicer when someone was sick and sweaty and miserable. 

And he knew, just knew, if positions were reversed, he'd be doing the same damned thing for Jim. 

So he'd drunk the soup and taken a shower and when Jim had woken him up in the night to drink more water because the Sentinel had sensed the increase in heat from his Guide's body and decided fluid was needed, he'd drunk the damn water and said thank-you. Because he would have done the same damned thing. 

And wasn't that beautifully, fucked-uppedly sweet? 

He'd spent the next two days in bed, because his cold was that really ugly flu going around, and he'd slept a lot, and spent the rest of the time wondering if this unsettling settling between him and Jim was some sort of Sentinel/Guide thing, some sort of instinctive response to a millennia-old bond. And despite years of practice, despite years of obfuscation, intellectual bullshitting and just willful avoidance, he couldn't make it stick. He had a hard time seeing Sentinel Primitive in a floral apron making Guide Primitive's mom's cure-all soup and then going out and renting a bunch of MST:3K videos. 

He did see husbands and wives doing that, though. 

Which meant, somewhere along the way, Naomi Sandburg's curly-haired boy had gotten himself hitched, without benefit of a freaking china pattern. 

And so he was brooding, this fine, wet, Cascadian morning, because although it had never been consummated, he wasn't entirely sure he wanted the damned thing annulled. He found, much to his surprise and discomfort, that he kind of liked it. 

Okay, he really liked it. 

Loved it. Loved Jim. 

And sometimes, if he squinted and looked a little sideways at Jim, he thought the older guy was hot. 

Okay, really hot. 

Which, if he were less medicated and feverish, would be really freaking him out. But right now, it just kinda felt nice. Even if he was the only one who noticed it, realized it, understood it. Wanted it. 

Goddamn the fickle gods of Anthropology T.A.'s anyway. He'd only wanted the freaking pen to start with. And now, here he was, one week later, flat on his back, moderately delirious, wanting Jim, who was so much of a bigger risk than one of those clicky pens. 

And worth, like, _no_ points on anyone's scavenger hunt. 

Except, Blair was finding, his own. 

)0( 

Somewhere about two, Blair surfaced to shamble to the bathroom and then shamble to the fridge, and yep, there was the pineapple-orange blend he liked and there was a bowl of fresh fruit and yep, there was Ben and Jerry's in the freezer. God Bless Jim. God Bless kind, loving, willfully ignorant and unobservant Jim, who could sense his body temperature from the loft overhead but hadn't noticed the wedding announcements going out to everybody who freaking knew them. 

Suddenly Blair wondered just how Jim would react. A year ago, he would have worried about ending up against a wall, or perhaps more realistically, out a window, but the older man had mellowed, had relaxed a fair bit. Hell, maybe he wasn't the only one who had experimented in the late 80's. There was, after all, Jim's track record of no long-term relationships and a failed marriage to a woman who said their split was mostly due to Jim's inability to achieve intimacy. Hmm. 

He poured himself some juice, and wandered over to the television. He probably should have been marking, but the way he was feeling he'd either pass or fail them all, so better to cruise the intellectual wasteland of afternoon television than the intellectual wasteland of first-year exams. 

He lingered over GH for a minute, but since the plotline seemed unchanged from the last time he'd watched, eight months ago, he continued flipping. Half an hour passed, but he couldn't find anything he wanted to watch. The MST:3K videos were still there, but they were no fun without the big guy, so he sat back and just sort of thought about Jim awhile, and let his thoughts drift and his body drift with his thoughts, and suddenly they all ended up very strange places indeed. 

Which of course was a perfect time for Jim to come home. 

Blair pulled the heavy throw from the back of the couch over his suddenly uncooperative lap. "Hey, man. You're home early." 

Jim nodded, went into the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water and then into the cupboards for some aspirin. A moment later he was sitting beside Blair on the couch. "I have," the Sentinel said balefully, "your goddamned flu." 

"Hey, hey, hey!" Blair protested. "I claim no ownership of this flu. This flu is the absolute _scarlet_ ... ah, virus of the contagion world, my friend, making the rounds and leaving bodies behind! I take no responsibility for this!" He poked the older man with his feet, burying cold toes under surprisingly warm thighs. 

Jim just fixed him with a glare from slightly rheumy eyes. "It's your flu, Sandburg. Where the hell else would I have got it?" 

And that, reasoned Blair, was that. Typhoid Blairy, doomed to close-confinement with a grumpy, under-the-weather Sentinel whose snuffling seemed to in no way inhibit, intimidate or otherwise dampen the incipient boner hidden under the blanket they'd bought at Mrs. Alvarez's yard sale. Oh well, at least the big guy's sense of smell would be notched down. 

Domestic fucking bliss. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and tried to _not_ picture Jim in a pearl necklace. Which, when he thought about it, was an even worse pun than the whole beaver thing he'd come up with earlier. He started giggling. 

"Whatever you're on, I want some," Jim said, a hint of a smile sneaking through the general grumpiness. Blair opened his eyes, looked at Jim, and just started laughing even harder, and then he was coughing and then he was choking and then Jim had him head-down over his knees and was whacking him firmly enough that pretty much every last bit of mucous came up. 

"That," wheezed Blair, after he was upright and wiped down, "was _so_ not cool man. Profoundly gross." His rubbed at his sore ribs, and glanced apologetically over at Jim, who was rinsing out his pretty much mutilated trousers in the kitchen sink. "All the work of marriage, none of the benefits." It was all he could do not to clap his hands over his mouth and just try to shove the words back in by force. Obviously the coughing fit had led to hypoxia and brain damage...swirlie city, here I come. 

Jim shot him an oblique look, turned off the tap, and came over to sit by him again. "You think that, Chief? I dunno. I've _been_ married, and I wouldn't say that." He handed Blair a glass of water. 

Blair drank the proffered water, and it felt good going down, and he drank it too damned quickly as a result and so managed to blow his only reason for not responding to the unvoiced question. "I've been thinking," he started, but then didn't say anything. 

Jim cuffed him upside the head. "Ah. That's what I've been smelling. I thought it was pheromones, but hell, burning brain cells works, too." Blair's head shot up, and he found Jim's eyes watching him, bright blue and piercing and as gentle as when he looked at McKinney's newborn. 

"You, ah, noticed?" Blair asked, his voice raspy for reasons that had nothing to do with the flu. 

Jim settled back into the couch, a small smile curving his mouth. "I noticed. Long before you ever did." 

And you didn't fucking say anything? Blair wanted to shout, but hell, if it weren't for oxygen deprivation, he would have still been sitting on that particular nugget. "You, ah, don't mind?" he managed at last. 

Jim tugged the blanket over them both, curling up his long, bare legs so that they pressed against the younger man. "Does it, ah, seem like I mind?" Jim teased gently. "Were you expecting me to throw you up against a wall or something?" 

Blair flopped his head back against the couch, and watched Jim's face, and for the first time in forever he felt like he was seeing everything, was seeing all the way through Jim, and was amazed to see himself reflected back. See himself in the wry smile, see himself in the hand that reached out to push a sweaty curl back, see himself in the gentleness of Jim's gaze. "People think we're a couple," he blurted out. "Lots of people, all over." 

Jim laughed. "They have since about two weeks after you moved in, Darwin. The only one who didn't know was you, I think." 

Well, fuck. Fuckety-fuck. "Jim -- are you gay?" Blair asked, and Jim just threw back his head and laughed, until he, too, was coughing. 

When at last he could speak again, he just shook his head. "The term, I believe, is bisexual. You?" 

"I don't know," Blair said honestly. "I just know that somewhere along the way, I stopped being just Blair and became part of Jim and Blair, and instead of scaring the absolute _crap_ out me I'm thinking it's the best thing ever, because all of a sudden there's someone there for me, you know? Someone who wants me there for them, and someplace I belong and somewhere I'd be missed and even when you're a surly, uncommunicative bastard you say more to me than anyone else ever has before, and I've given you everything I am, and hell, you haven't run away screaming and _jesus_ , will you just kiss me already so I can just shut the fuck up before I make an ass of myself?" 

"Too late," Jim murmured and then his mouth was over Blair's and he was kissing Blair sweetly, gently, which threw all of Blair's preconceptions out the window because he'd expected something wild and masterful and here he was, being touched with reverence, with love, and it was so damned good it made him want to cry and this was, this was everything he'd never expected, everything he'd ever needed, and praise the gods of Anthropology T.A.'s, who worked in mysterious, absofuckinglutely marvelous ways. 

A long, long time later, he found himself curled up against Jim, the older man's fingers stroking absent-minded patterns along his thigh and hip. "So, uh. We sorta skipped the whole dating, courtship thing, didn't we?" Blair said drowsily. Jim snorted. 

"I recall pointing out your little courtship rituals pretty much right off the bat, Darwin," Jim murmured. "And those courtside seats I bought last spring were a hell of a lot sexier than flowers." 

Blair twisted around, searched Jim's face in the weakening light. "So you're saying the last eighteen months have been a courtship," Blair said, and there was another one of those 100-watt epiphanies, and he started giggling all over again, until Jim thwacked him soundly. 

"My pants wash, this blanket is dry-clean," Jim said reprovingly. "What's so goddamned funny?" 

"I was just wondering how you'd feel about a pearl necklace, to commemorate the occasion " Blair asked, and Jim stared at him in confusion, then consternation and then he was laughing as well, until they were both coughing so hard that neither could sit up straight. 

"Hell, Chief," he managed at last. "Up until now, all you've ever given me was your goddamned flu. A pearl necklace sounds pretty damned nice. But you wear the high heels." He helped Blair back up onto the couch, settled the younger man against him comfortably. Blair sighed, sank in, felt good despite the virus ravaging his system. 

"You could have got this flu anywhere, man," Blair said after awhile, a pro forma protest. 

"It's _your_ flu, Sandburg," Jim replied firmly, and he sounded indecently pleased about that. "I wouldn't get anyone else's." 

And that, apparently, was that. Blair Sandburg had traded in wine, women and song for wine, something he'd come up with a rhyme for when he wasn't medicated, and schlong. 

Which seemed a pretty damned good deal to him. 

An End. 


End file.
